Film/moving picture show you most recently watched

[Happy Face 29]

Tyson

 

 

A very frank, honest and moving portray of the man, by the man. Not some heavy on actual boxing footage, but more so Tyson speaking of the events througout his life in chronological order. Something which I found quite fortifying, simply because we've all seen the footage several times before and it was good to see this documentaries take on things from a different perspective.

 

I must admit I found his honesty very forthcoming, in particular saying how he just kept on fighting for the money, his take on the Holyfield fight, and particular how he hadn't actually enjoyed fighting since 1991. Plus his insistence to this day that he's still innocent, and never actually committed the rape he was locked away for. Also he has a vocabulary that Alex would be proud of.

 

Plus it was good to see him call Don King a wretched, reptilian motherfucker!

 

Thought I'd put this in the Tyson thread, but it seems not....

 

"It's like a Greek tragedy. The only problem is that I'm the subject," Mike Tyson reputedly told James Toback when he first saw this film. There is a classical structure to the narrative: a kid from mean streets, with few prospects, a life of criminality already under way, is talent-spotted by a grizzled boxing trainer; he becomes the youngest world champion ever; then it all disintegrates into hedonism, profligacy and violence. Yet in the end the structure of the story is psychoanalytic as much as tragic (after all, it wasn't for nothing that Freud turned to Sophocles and Aeschylus for analogues of his discoveries). A familiar enough narrative arc, but what makes it even more remarkable and even more Freudian) is that it happens again. Tyson struggles back to the top of the heavyweight game before once again succumbing to ill-discipline and self-destruction. A textbook case of the compulsion to repeat.

 

Tyson's life was shaped by absent fathers and father surrogates. He was rescued from rudderless street survivalism by the trainer who ended up adopting him, Cus D'Amato; his subsequent fall from grace was precipitated in part by D'Amato's death. The Tyson that emerges in Toback's gripping film is very much like the subject of psychoanalysis, a talking head coaxed by the director (in the role of the offscreen analyst) into reliving all the triumphs and traumas. The film consists only of archive footage and Tyson - a ringside commentator on his own life - talking. There are no experts, no supposedly neutral judgements, only Tyson trying to make sense of the double tragedy of his life. It makes for a claustrophobic experience, amped up by the way in which Toback occasionally multi-tracks Tyson's voice and splits the screen, creating the impression of a divided man, sometimes chillingly self-aware, sometimes a mystery to himself.

 

Tyson's story is sufficiently forgotten now that it is capable of thrilling and horrifying us as if for the first time: the astonishingly quick rise to world champion, the run of viciously efficient victories, the high-profile debacle of his marriage to Robin Givens (Tyson sitting stock still on a chatshow couch while the actress vilifies him), the rape conviction and resulting prison sentence, the conversion to Islam, the biting of Evander Holyfield's ear... Tyson provides a newly intimate perspective on these half-remembered images.

 

Sports stars of this magnitude cannot but be the objects of collective fantasy and projection, and even though his is an individual story - and we can be under no illusions after watching Tyson that there is no lonelier sport than boxing - Tyson's is also the story of a culture and a time. Just compare Tyson with Muhammad Ali (whose own myth was examined and re-presented in When We Were Kings and Ali). With his poetry, physical and verbal, Ali was the boxer for the age of Black Power, the Panthers, Malcolm X, Sly Stone and James Brown; Tyson's pitbull brutality, meanwhile, was the fight analogue of the every-man-for-himself ethos of Reaganomics and the will-to-power pugilism of rap. His slogan was 'Refuse to Lose' (a phrase that would be central to Public Enemy's epochal Welcome to the Terrordome): the aim was to overcome Nemesis by force of will alone, and in his pomp Tyson looked like iron will embodied. He came out of his corner like a starved attack dog, clubbing opponents into oblivion in a matter of moments. Nothing was wasted; there was no grandstanding or showboating.

 

Partly that was because Tyson felt he had no time to waste - for physical as well as existential reasons. He had suffered from a respiratory disorder since childhood and knew that he would struggle if fights went the full distance. The rapidity and intensity of his victories belied the precision of his attacks. We learn that it wasn't a question of sheer physical force alone. D'Amato (a "master of anatomy", according to Joyce Carol Oates) taught him where on the body to hit to cause maximum damage. In the fight footage, Tyson always looks short by comparison with his opponents - "at five feet 11 inches," Oates wrote in a 1986 essay, "he is short for a heavyweight and strikes the eye as shorter still; his 222 1/4-pound body is so sculpted in muscle it looks foreshortened, brutally compact." Yet he always turned that compactness to his advantage, making the taller men look like ponderous Harryhausen statues.

 

Listening to him speak, you're continually struck by the contrast between Tyson the fighting machine and Tyson the talker. His voice is a gentle lisp, devoid of swagger, suggestive of an unusual sensitivity. It sits just as oddly with Tyson's older face and its Queequeg tattoos as it did with his earlier fighting frame. It becomes obvious, though, that the hypermuscular body Tyson developed was in part an exo-skeleton constructed to protect that sensitive core. Remembering the time he first realised that no one would ever be able to be beat him up again, Tyson stalls - "Oh, I can't even say it," - pauses for a long moment before saying, "Because I would fuckin' kill 'em." The film's rhythm is governed by Tyson's unstable relationship to language, by his switches in and out of articulacy. Sometimes his tongue is as quick as his fists once were. His hilarious takedown of Don King - a 'wretched slimy reptilian motherfucker' - is as swift and savage as any of his combinations in the ring. Elsewhere, the words elude him, or he evades them. Yet, exactly as psychoanalysis taught us to expect, the ellipses, the sentences that lead nowhere and the 'wrong' choice of word tell us even more than the moments of transparent lucidity. The unconscious speaks, and James Toback demonstrates an extraordinary facility for hearing and recording it.

 

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/4884

Edited April 12, 2009 by Happy Face

[Barney 0]

The Wrestler - brilliant

The Prestige - very enjoyable

Choke - really good. Sam Whatsit is quality

Groundhog Day - One of the best comedies of all time

 

 

about to watch Burn After Reading

[Blackas 0]

Trainspotting on Film 4 right now.

[Jusoda Kid 1]

Hide - Quite an entertaining and clever English film about a birdwatcher who finds himself with an uninvited guest in his hide.

[LeazesMag 0]

Slumdog Millionaire

 

Quite good, a bit overrated though.

[luckyluke 1]

2J, I'm not suggesting that he did it, but I don't see how you can cite Tyson's denial that he raped a woman as an example of his honesty.

[Jimbo 133]

2J, I'm not suggesting that he did it, but I don't see how you can cite Tyson's denial that he raped a woman as an example of his honesty.

 

I believe that Tyson believes that he didn't rape Desirae Washington, but that doesn't mean he didn't.

 

if that makes any sense at all.

[luckyluke 1]

2J, I'm not suggesting that he did it, but I don't see how you can cite Tyson's denial that he raped a woman as an example of his honesty.

 

I believe that Tyson believes that he didn't rape Desirae Washington, but that doesn't mean he didn't.

 

if that makes any sense at all.

 

I think it does. You mean he thought it was consentual sex but it may not have been?

[Jimbo 133]

2J, I'm not suggesting that he did it, but I don't see how you can cite Tyson's denial that he raped a woman as an example of his honesty.

 

I believe that Tyson believes that he didn't rape Desirae Washington, but that doesn't mean he didn't.

 

if that makes any sense at all.

 

I think it does. You mean he thought it was consentual sex but it may not have been?

 

 

Yes, in Tyson's mind: woman + hotel room = Jiggy-Jiggy.

[Happy Face 29]

The only negative review I've seen is Kermode's who thought it was far too soft on his disgraceful misogyny.

[luckyluke 1]

The only negative review I've seen is Kermode's who thought it was far too soft on his disgraceful misogyny.

 

Yeah I heard that too. But if memory serves he cried at High School Musical 3, the bender.

[David Kelly 1117]

Out Of The Past 8/10. One of Robert Mitchum's best films

In The Heat Of The Night 7/10.

Red River 8/10. One of Wayne's finest.

[Park Life 70]

I loved the Tyson movie, can't wait to watch it again, I put the Mike Tyson's Greatest Hits DVD on last night for a bit of nostalgia.

 

 

Yet another reminder how boxers tend to get stereotyped.

[David Kelly 1117]

Zack & Miri Make A Porno 7.5/10. Is this a Rom Com? Not up there with Smith's best efforts but still a lot funnier than most out there. Glad he didn't drag out the will they or won't they get back together in favour of the Dutch Rudder!

[David Kelly 1117]

Lakeview Terrace 7/10. Pretty good and an excellent performance from Jackson, not his usual over the top shite that he's been doing far too long now.

[snakehips 0]

The Boat That Rocked.

 

It had the odd witty bit, but no belly laughs at all. The soundtrack saved it. 7/10.

[Holden McGroin 5007]

Little Children - 8/10

 

Some memorable acting, especially from Jackie Earle Haley.

[Happy Face 29]

Madagascar

 

Canny little cartoon. Lot's of good geeky film references for stuff like American Beauty, Planet of the Apes and Lord of the Flies.

 

Madagascar 2

 

More of the same and all the duller for it. Lazy approach of noting how much the kids liked "I Like To Move It" so putting it in repeatedly AGAIN.

Also highlights the Dreamworks formula for cartoons which the original managed to keep under the radar a bit better... Ben Stiller as a confused lion Hero trying to please the parents = Mike Myers as a confused Ogre Hero trying to please the parents, Eddie Murphy as a wacky Donkey sidekick feeling marginalised by his partner = Chris Rock as a wacky Zebra sidekick feeling marginalised by his partner, Zany Dragon and Donkey cross breed relationship = Zany Giraffe and Hippo cross breed relationship etc.

 

The crack Penguin troop are funnier than any of the shrek extras though.

[Monkeys Fist 39021]

Naked on Film Four last night.

David Thewlis top actor , jammy bastard( shagging Anna Friel)

[David Kelly 1117]

Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun 5/10. 60's sci fi from Gerry Anderson and it plays like a live action episode of Thunderbirds. Not very good at all.

Eastern Promises 7/10. The ending was a bit low key and didn't seem to fit the rest of the film for me which was a shame because I thought it was excellent until then.

Gun Fight At The OK Coral 9/10. Classic. Lancaster and Douglas were both fine actors and had a great chemistry together and this is one of the best 'traditional' type westerns I've seen. Ranks right up there with Rio Bravo.

[khay 8]

Max Payne, gash. 4/10.

[Jimbo 133]

Max Payne, utter gash. 4/10.

 

 

FYP

[tooner 243]

slumdog mill-onaire.......damn danny boyle is an awesome director

[MattM4 0]

The Wrestler - v, vee good.

[Toonraider 0]

I've had abit of a film fest recently...

Wanted.

Twilight.

The lion, the witch and the wardrobe/ Prince Caspian (I know )

Walk the Line

Interview with a vampire